Read more here.
Why this is important for all of us here.
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
UN Biodiversity Science Panel Gets The Go-ahead
Read more here.
Why this is important for all of us here.
The Other Cancun Meeting
If, like me, you were a bit frustrated by the passing of yet another climate conference without a final deal, this link might cheer you up.
It appears that, despite the slow progress at a global level, many nations, regions, businesses, and local governments are on their own fastpath towards a low carbon future. Some of them decided to hold a parallel summit not far from Cancun....
It appears that, despite the slow progress at a global level, many nations, regions, businesses, and local governments are on their own fastpath towards a low carbon future. Some of them decided to hold a parallel summit not far from Cancun....
2010 On Course To Be Warmest On Record
According to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, January to November 2010 was the warmest first eleven months of the year since records began 131 years ago. November 2010 itself was also the warmest on record.
Looks like 2010 is still set to become a warmest year so far despite the cooling effect of a strong La Niña in the Pacific and a deep solar minimum (i.e. we're not getting as much energy from the Sun as normal).
Looks like 2010 is still set to become a warmest year so far despite the cooling effect of a strong La Niña in the Pacific and a deep solar minimum (i.e. we're not getting as much energy from the Sun as normal).
Energy Saving Tip #5: Desktop or Laptop Computer?
According to DEFRA (The UK's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), a new laptop uses about 80% less energy than a new desktop and monitor. This is because laptops are designed to be more efficient to allow them to be smaller and portable.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Seasonal Thoughts
It's that time of year again when my thoughts turn to fuel bills.
The energy companies must love the Winter because even the most frugal customer has to turn up the heating. Especially if there's cold snap going on. Looking out the window, I see snow on the ground again. We hardly ever get snow in the south-east of England at this time of year. We almost never get a white Christmas.
So power suppliers must be laughing all the way to the bank this year.
I hate the fact that they hike the fuel prices in Autumn (often by above inflation), announce huge profits in the Spring, then make some token cut in prices come early Summer.
The above graph shows the typical provider response to wholesale gas prices (The blue line). Notice how they increase the price to the customer (The other line) in response to rapidly increasing wholesale prices in 2008 and yet, as the latter falls equally quickly in 2009, the retail price was left at practically the same level until the present day? Yeah, thanks for that guys.
It's this kind of thing that makes me all the more determined to reduce our heating bill (and carbon footprint, of course).
So far, I've swapped our very old boiler for an A rated condenser boiler, stuck thermostats on all our radiators, had cavity wall insulation put in, draught proofed the house, and we already have double glazing throughout.
All we've got left is the loft insulation and I'm quite close to sorting that one out. That could save us up to £200 a year.
Next stop: Generating our own heating?
The energy companies must love the Winter because even the most frugal customer has to turn up the heating. Especially if there's cold snap going on. Looking out the window, I see snow on the ground again. We hardly ever get snow in the south-east of England at this time of year. We almost never get a white Christmas.
So power suppliers must be laughing all the way to the bank this year.
I hate the fact that they hike the fuel prices in Autumn (often by above inflation), announce huge profits in the Spring, then make some token cut in prices come early Summer.
The above graph shows the typical provider response to wholesale gas prices (The blue line). Notice how they increase the price to the customer (The other line) in response to rapidly increasing wholesale prices in 2008 and yet, as the latter falls equally quickly in 2009, the retail price was left at practically the same level until the present day? Yeah, thanks for that guys.
It's this kind of thing that makes me all the more determined to reduce our heating bill (and carbon footprint, of course).
So far, I've swapped our very old boiler for an A rated condenser boiler, stuck thermostats on all our radiators, had cavity wall insulation put in, draught proofed the house, and we already have double glazing throughout.
All we've got left is the loft insulation and I'm quite close to sorting that one out. That could save us up to £200 a year.
Next stop: Generating our own heating?
Friday, 17 December 2010
California Is First US State To Approve Carbon Trading
The President may be unable to get anything resembling a climate bill into law but that doesn't stop certain states making their own legislation. California is probably foremost amongst these, having passed a series of number of carbon cutting measures.
Now the State has voted for a cap-and-trade system to encourage businesses to cut their CO2 emissions. California want to cut carbon to 1990 levels by 2020 (A 29% cut).
The question now is, will the other green states, like Vermont, Oregon and Washington join them?
More details here.
Now the State has voted for a cap-and-trade system to encourage businesses to cut their CO2 emissions. California want to cut carbon to 1990 levels by 2020 (A 29% cut).
The question now is, will the other green states, like Vermont, Oregon and Washington join them?
More details here.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
UK Govt. Announces List of Electric Cars Eligible for Grants
 |
| Mitsubishi i-MiEV |
The cars are the Chevrolet Volt, Citroen C-Zero, Mitsubishi i-MiEV (pictured), Nissan Leaf, Peugeot iOn, Smart Fortwo ed, Tata Vista EV, Toyota Prius Plug-In and Vauxhall Ampera.
Of these, only the Mitsubishi, Smart, and Peugeot will actually be available for delivery at the beginning of 2011. And only the Mitsubishi can be bought, £24k after the grant, the other 2 will start off as rentals. The Nissan and Tata will arrive in March. The Citroen "Early 2011". The others in 2012.
Apparently, the Vauxhall, Citreon, Mitsubishi, and Peugeot are basically same car re-badged with a few mods!
Interestingly, the established EVs - like the Tesla and G-Wiz, amongst others - are missing from the list. Strange. It's almost like the government are trying to prevent a rush on the grants.
Whether or not that's the reason, I'm betting it's frustrated a lot of people who were hoping to make use of the grant come the New Year.
Monday, 13 December 2010
Cancun: Success or Failure?
 |
| Protest at Cancun |
- China and the U.S. had fallen out in a preliminary meeting over verification of emission cuts.
- Japan, Russia and Canada were refusing to extend the Kyoto protocol (i.e. The last climate deal) because it didn't include all countries, especially the 2 biggest emitters: The U.S. and China.
- And the word was, if this conference finished as badly as the last one (Copenhagen), the whole U.N. climate negotiation process would be as good as dead.
Two weeks later, as the conference was nearing it's conclusion, things were still looking pretty bad. A number of countries were refusing to budge on a whole range of issues. But, after working long into the last night, they finally had the documents all the countries (except Bolivia) could agree.
The draft agreement commits all nations to keeping the global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees C, although no mechanism for doing this has been sorted out.
Japan, Canada, and Russia have been kept in the process with wording that allowed the possibility of the Kyoto Protocol not being extended, whilst emphasising that the protocol was still the best way forward - Something developing countries had insisted on.
Developing countries will only have their emission cutting measures verified if funded by western money. This keeps the Chinese happy - who saw it as challenge to national sovereignty - and the US, who had insisted on verification.
A 'Green Fund' to help developing nations fight global warming was also agreed: $100 bn (£64 bn)) are to be paid in per year by 2020. It will go towards helping these countries adopt low carbon technology and adapt to climate change. An Adaptation Committee will be set up to support them in their efforts. The fund will be handled by the World Bank (initially), at the insistence of the US, EU and Japan.
Outline details were also worked out for funding the efforts of developing countries to reduce deforestation. This ties in with last month's biodiversity talks at Nagoya.
Success or Failure?
So, another year passes without a binding global agreement on climate change. To some that makes the conference a failure.
Yet the UN climate process lives on and real progress has been made this time round. To me, that's success.
Okay, there's still a long way to go before a meaningful final agreement is made, and a lot can go wrong in the meantime, but Cancun has laid down something than can be built on in South Africa next year. We're still in with a fighting chance.
Friday, 10 December 2010
The Future Of Energy Part 4: Energy Storage
In part 1 of this series, I made a case for reducing our dependance on fossil fuels as much, and as soon, as possible. In the rest of this series I'll be looking at ways this might be done.
So far I've looked at wind (part 2) and solar (part 3), and I've said that these can only ever make up 20% of our total electric supply. The reason being that they are intermittent sources (i.e. not round the clock) and you can't run a modern society on an electric supply that shuts down over-night!
So, is it possible to get round this problem? Well, it looks like the answer is (or will be) "Yes" if something called Grid Energy Storage lives up to it's promise.
The idea works like this: National power grids are set-up to meet the maximum possible demand the population can place on it. If they weren't, then there would be 'black-outs' all the time.
The trouble with this approach is that, for the majority of the time, there are power-stations sitting around idle, waiting for peak demand. Meanwhile, there will be others, the ones which can't be switched on and off at a moments notice (like coal, nuclear, solar and wind), that are sometimes generating electric with nowhere for it to go (e.g. when everyone's asleep). Crazy.
Imagine if you could store that excess electric, and release it at peak demand: You wouldn't need so many power stations doing nothing. Potentially huge cost savings.
Another benefit of energy storage would be for 'smoothing out' the supply dips in intermittent sources like wind and solar. This would effectively give you a constant supply from these sources, enabling them to make up much more than the 20% of the total electric supply I mentioned earlier.
For me, energy storage will play a key role in our efforts to reduce carbon emissions. It will allow electric generation to be more efficient by holding onto any excess until it's needed; permit solar and wind power to be bigger players in generating electric; and, for transport, smaller, cheaper, lighter batteries will revolutionise electric cars.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
But energy storage is still in it's infancy and it may be a decade or more away from making a real impact. So what do we do in the meantime? Well, for a start, keep adding to the wind turbines and solar power stations as fast as possible. It's going to take a while for most countries to reach their 20% thresholds anyway. By then, energy storage may be in the position to take off.
My concern though is: What happens if, for some reason, energy storage doesn't take off?
I look at a possible answer in the next part of this series.
More on energy storage.
So far I've looked at wind (part 2) and solar (part 3), and I've said that these can only ever make up 20% of our total electric supply. The reason being that they are intermittent sources (i.e. not round the clock) and you can't run a modern society on an electric supply that shuts down over-night!
So, is it possible to get round this problem? Well, it looks like the answer is (or will be) "Yes" if something called Grid Energy Storage lives up to it's promise.
The idea works like this: National power grids are set-up to meet the maximum possible demand the population can place on it. If they weren't, then there would be 'black-outs' all the time.
The trouble with this approach is that, for the majority of the time, there are power-stations sitting around idle, waiting for peak demand. Meanwhile, there will be others, the ones which can't be switched on and off at a moments notice (like coal, nuclear, solar and wind), that are sometimes generating electric with nowhere for it to go (e.g. when everyone's asleep). Crazy.
Imagine if you could store that excess electric, and release it at peak demand: You wouldn't need so many power stations doing nothing. Potentially huge cost savings.
Another benefit of energy storage would be for 'smoothing out' the supply dips in intermittent sources like wind and solar. This would effectively give you a constant supply from these sources, enabling them to make up much more than the 20% of the total electric supply I mentioned earlier.
Types of Energy Storage
There are actually many different types (See here) so I'm just going to pick out a few to show the potential:- Batteries: It's difficult to think of batteries, even big ones, holding enough energy to be useful to a national grid, but that's exactly what they are being used for right now. The types of batteries range from relatives of the familiar lithium-ion (e.g. found in laptops) and lead acid (in cars) to the less well known sodium based, and so-called flow batteries. The most popular variety at the moment are sodium sulphur batteries but many others show promise, especially flow batteries.
- Flywheels: These are already in use for grid power in a few cases. Flywheels involve accelerating a rotor to a very high speed to store the excess energy, then decelerating them to recover the energy.
- Molten Salt: You might remember I mentioned something called concentrated solar power (csp) in part 2 of this thread? With csp, an array of mirrors focus sunlight on a central tower creating heat. This heat is used to boil water and drive turbines. Any excess energy can be stored in reservoirs of molten salt for a number of hours until it's needed. This could have huge potential for sunnier regions like Australia, the Mediterranean, and California. It's a proven technology and it's likely to go into full commercial use very soon.
- Pumped Hydro: This is a commonly used storage technique which involves using spare energy to pump water uphill to a raised reservoir. To release the energy, you just let the water flow back down and drive a turbine. The obvious problem with this is that reservoirs aren't always possible e.g. Not enough room, or the land is too flat.
For me, energy storage will play a key role in our efforts to reduce carbon emissions. It will allow electric generation to be more efficient by holding onto any excess until it's needed; permit solar and wind power to be bigger players in generating electric; and, for transport, smaller, cheaper, lighter batteries will revolutionise electric cars.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
But energy storage is still in it's infancy and it may be a decade or more away from making a real impact. So what do we do in the meantime? Well, for a start, keep adding to the wind turbines and solar power stations as fast as possible. It's going to take a while for most countries to reach their 20% thresholds anyway. By then, energy storage may be in the position to take off.
My concern though is: What happens if, for some reason, energy storage doesn't take off?
I look at a possible answer in the next part of this series.
More on energy storage.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Can Australia Go Zero Carbon Emissions By 2020?
According to a team of scientists, engineers, and economists from Melbourne University and the Energy Research Institute, the answer to that question is "Yes".
They have provided a detailed blueprint on how it can be done using current, proven technology, at a reasonable cost. Click here to see the plan (192 pages). The 17 page synopsis is here.
If they've got their numbers right then Australia has been handed a golden opportunity: Whilst other countries are struggling to identify a path to 80% reductions by 2050, the Aussies, thanks to their unique circumstances, have the chance to go 100% in just 10 years and have complete energy security whilst the rest of us get hit by every oil/gas/coal price hike for years to come. Sounds like a great reason to migrate to Australia!
It should be interesting to see what the Australian government's response will be. I bet they're being lobbied heavily by their coal and natural gas industries already.....
They have provided a detailed blueprint on how it can be done using current, proven technology, at a reasonable cost. Click here to see the plan (192 pages). The 17 page synopsis is here.
If they've got their numbers right then Australia has been handed a golden opportunity: Whilst other countries are struggling to identify a path to 80% reductions by 2050, the Aussies, thanks to their unique circumstances, have the chance to go 100% in just 10 years and have complete energy security whilst the rest of us get hit by every oil/gas/coal price hike for years to come. Sounds like a great reason to migrate to Australia!
It should be interesting to see what the Australian government's response will be. I bet they're being lobbied heavily by their coal and natural gas industries already.....
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